Machination
by thermodynamic
Summary: Curly Shepard is twenty when he first kills a man.


I was working on more Crossroads/future stuff, and I was struggling a bit to see what's making Curly tick during this period, which produced... this. I'm sorry in advance. It's... dark.

* * *

Curly Shepard is twenty when he first kills a man. He's got a wife at home that he loves and an infant son that he loves too, even if he admits, in his heart of hearts, that he wasn't at all qualified to have him. His brother might call him a dumb little_ mocoso_ and a pain in his ass almost daily, but he's old enough to appreciate the deep affection and concern hidden beneath the insults. He is his mother's favorite son, and though it means very little, his stepfather's. He wants to separate all of these things from who he is now, a split personality he can shed like snakeskin and leave here, but that would be a lie. Who he is now only makes sense in context.

Marcos is one of Tim's old gang members; the whole outfit splintered years ago, some ending up in Big Mac, some in Nam, a lucky few absorbed into the Ramirez drug dealing apparatus. His face, excuse the cliché, lights up when he sees Curly dip inside the badly-locked bar— they're close, or at least Marcos is under the impression that they are. Curly is everybody's friend and nobody's at the same time, and he's never considered it much of a paradox. Cultivated a broad circle of them, but kept himself at a careful distance, learned the skill of sharing just enough to get others to show their hands. The only exception was ever Ponyboy Curtis, and he's gone now. "Took you long enough."

He smiles, on reflex. Curly is always smiling and rarely means it. Clutches his forearm with a strong grip, shakes it up and down, claps him on the back. "Hey, _Papá,_ how you been? How's Valentina?" Valentina just had a baby a few months ago; Curly personally went to deliver flowers and a new bassinet. "Kid lettin' you sleep yet?"

"Nah, _sabes_ the lil' shit's havin' a sleep regression—" Marcos flicks on the lights, slips behind the bar and pulls out a bottle of Southern Comfort. "God, I need a fucking drink."

"What's with all this cloak and dagger shit, anyway?" Curly widens his eyes on purpose, accepts the glass Marcos slides to him. "Breaking in here, in the middle of the night—"

"You're gettin' paranoid, Shepard." He tries to soften what he says with a nudge to his shoulder, but Curly is smart enough to understand the slap that his mother's bastard name is supposed to be, when his uncles have tried so hard to stylize him as _Carlos Ramirez_. "Maybe I just wanted to catch up."

Marcos is the worst kind of liar, which is to say he reminds Curly intensely of his brother. He thinks he's a good one, which makes him cocky, but he shows everything on his face. "Don't bullshit me, c'mon."

"You always wanted out your brother's shadow, didn't you." Marcos leans forward on his elbows, eyes dark and hungry. It's not a question. "Even when we was kids, practically... don't pretend you wasn't happy when Luis took Tim down to _la patria_, left you in charge of things around here."

"_Quizás_." Curly lifts one shoulder in a mockery of a shrug, takes another sip of his whiskey before he speaks again. "But Tim's installin' drywall and playin' house with some _negrita_ on the East side, he's been out of the way for a while now." Tim is the only man Curly has ever trusted, and he likes Gabi just fine, too. "I don't see what you're gettin' at, I can't be more in the sun than I already am."

Marcos will put up with him playing dumb as long as it flatters his ego, he's calculated as much. Might even try to convince himself it's true. "You really like bein' in your uncles'?"

He probably says the plural but means the singular— Alberto, though just a shade younger, is Luis's flunky and always will be. Curly's seen him put a bullet in a TV and take a baseball bat to a coffeemaker, and he can understand why. "I don't have so many other options, do I?" He widens his eyes again, tries to strike the right balance between looking hopeless and looking for a solution. "I'll take this crew over once—"

Once Luis dies, or gets arrested, inevitably, the idea of him reaching some kind of peaceful retirement is ludicrous. "I know you're not really his nephew," Marcos says like he solved a sphinx's riddle. Like it isn't painfully obvious, by now, that Curly bears precious little resemblance to either one of his uncles. "You don't owe him whatever you think you do."

"I'll be the judge of that." Curly adds a little bite to this sentence. He owes his uncle everything— he gave him a home and a family, when his older brother rejected him. When his own father rejected him. "If you're serious, I need to know who else you got roped into this. If I can rely on them more."

"Couple other guys tired of takin' Luis's shit, is all," he says, and plays a fatal hand. "Javier and Nacho and I, we been talkin'—"

"So it's you, Sanchez, and Ruíz tryna stage a coup." Luis climbs out from under one of the tables, his trusty .45 raised. He's always had a flair for the dramatic— in another life, maybe he was an actor. "That's all _I_ needed to know."

Marcos gapes like a dead fish. "Curly, what the hell—"

Another smile spreads, more thinly, across Curly's face. "Good _God_, you are one dumb motherfucker. And I ain't exactly winnin' no Nobel Prizes myself."

What happens next is profoundly undignified and embarrassing to watch. Curly wishes he could jam his fingers in his ears and close his eyes, not have to witness a man as he realizes he's done for. "Please, _Jesucristo_, I didn't mean it, I was never gonna do anythin' so bad, please— I got a wife at home, a baby, please God I don't want to die— you won't do it, you won't kill me— Curly, you won't let him kill me—"

He's crying, on his knees; judging by the growing dark stain on the front of his pants, he's pissed himself. Curly feels sympathy, but from sympathy, it's a short slide to contempt. "Don't worry, I'll throw some money the grievin' widow's way," Luis says with a sneer, "she didn't do nothing 'cept marry a fucking _cobarde_."

And of course Luis blows his brains out with a loud bang; the bullet falls to the ground like a dropped nickel, Marcos's blood and bone and tissue splattered across the wall. Luis's aim has been honed to perfection over the years, Curly's never seen him miss a shot. Curly focuses on being impressed by Luis's aim instead of looking at what was once Marcos. "Life ain't a fucking action movie, there's no secret good in my heart," Luis says with disgust. Curly can't tell if it's for the corpse or for himself. "_No tengo_ _piedad para los traidores_. I'm gonna have to get rid of his body, too, aren't I, before it stinks. Dissolve that shit in lye, the river's too dried up yet."

Curly has always known, since he was very young, that he has the uncanny ability to make people like him. Known that he might have not gotten much in the way of smarts— or work ethic, judging by how Tim hollered at him over his report cards— but he can skate by without it and manipulate anyone to get what he wants. He used to wonder how far he could take that, how far he was willing to go. Now he has his answer.

Curly also knows that he and his brother are opposites. Tim might be abrasive, he might lack manners or tact, he's aggressively, purposely unlikeable, but beneath the surface, he's a good man. A sense of honor about him. He would never lure somebody into a trap like drowning a bee in honey.

Strip away the veneer of charm and friendliness from Curly, and there's nothing left. That's why Tim's gone and he's still here.

"Next time, I'll let you do the honors." Luis winks, no humor in it, but no regret either. Curly has a five-month-old son at home, who will grow up to be a man like his daddy. He pours himself another glass of whiskey and wishes he was the one with a bullet in him.


End file.
